Duty
by statira
Summary: Sixteen year old Sirius can take no more of his family; he is leaving tonight.


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Title: "Duty."

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Characters: Sirius Black and Bellatrix Black.

Rating: T

Summary: Sixteen year old Sirius can take no more of his family; he is leaving tonight.

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"_Do well the duty that lies before you_."  
- Pittacus of Mitylene

"_Ours not to reason why_"  
-Alfred Lord Tennyson

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Silently she spied the dark haired boy struggling with the bulky chest. The lone sock blowing from its prison, a testament to the haste in which the teenager had packed. She watched as he scraped the expensive chest along the steep, stone steps. He was careful to make as little sound as possible. The sixteen-year-old knew the boy was cursing and that although veiled his fingers itched to pull the wand from the back pocket of his tight jeans. He wouldn't risk it, not now. She knew this; after all he was her cousin.

The youth felt someone watching him, instinctively knowing to whom the hard gaze belonged. She always did appear at the most inappropriate moments.

"I know you're there," he said taking a seat on the oak that contained all his possessions. Casually he crossed his right ankle on his left knee and leaned back arms folded against the brick wall behind him. He was anything but, it was an act and both would play their parts impeccably.

"Smoke?" she offered extending a slightly damaged silver case, engraved with the Family Motto and Crest.

Taking one he mumbled, "_Toujours pur_." They both knew it would be the last they'd share. A golden flame flickered from a serpent's mouth in the cool summer air, he nodded his thanks.

"Leaving then?" she commented flicking ash to the pavement. "Potter's I suppose?" she continued nonchalant, as though this were all so natural. She ignored the already purple bruise that marred his otherwise perfect cheekbone and the dried blood that had dribbled from his swollen lip.

He noted the blue haze that escaped her pursed lips transform into tendrils of yellowish smoke, as she brushed an ebony curl away from her eye and wondered when had she become so indifferent? When did she cease to care? He hadn't heard her laugh in years. He remembered a time, as a child, when she played and could even recall a time she sang. Although she splashed in the mud and climbed trees she had always possessed a penchant for torturing insects. Trapping slugs in circles of salt, and disembodying spiders. It should have been an indication of what was to come. She had shown no remorse at her mother's funeral, an action that had impressed certain members of the family and cemented her position within. She showed no weakness, she never cried. He didn't believe that there was ever a time a tear leaked from that onyx gaze. No. Blacks did not cry, especially not Bellatrix Black.

They'd once been close, as close as was possible in their family, until that pivotal September, until the day they left for Hogwarts. That was when their paths had truly separated. Until then, they had received the same teachings, read the same literature. The word 'Muggle' was forbidden, Muggle-born was a word he didn't even learn until first year. Sirius believed everyone referred to them as Mudbloods. Bellatrix had been sorted first. When the hat had shouted Slytherin she'd hopped off the stool and walked head high and proud to the table, content in the knowledge that she had fulfilled her first task. He could still picture her seated at the table so pleased, pointing at him as he sat on the stool and indicating to the seat beside her. The confused look in her eyes when the sorting hat didn't shout what had been expected, Malfoy whispering to his irate older cousin. The bitter look seeping into Bellatrix eyes both of them knowing that the trouble was just beginning.

"You don't have to leave." It was said so quietly that at first Sirius thought he'd imagined it; she wasn't even looking in his direction.

"I can't take it anymore."

"But you could stay." She turned to him. "Once you graduate your parents might forget and forgive you for being a Gryffindor. Then everything will be as it should be."

"You don't seriously believe that, _do you_?"

Bellatrix turned her gaze back to the street her fingers picked at the loose tread in her jumper, after the last few weeks she wasn't sure what she believed anymore. She groaned quietly to herself realising she'd poked a small hole in her sleeve and she indicated to her cousin to move up on the trunk. She ran her hand through his shiny, dark hair and sighed.

"I just want it to be the way it was suppose to be Sirius."

"This _is_ the way," he replied, but didn't remove her hand.

Bellatrix's fingers recoiled into her palm as though stung and she lowered her arm to her lap. "I just don't get you anymore Sirius. I don't understand; how can you look so happy when you sit with those blood traitors?"

"There's more to life than blood Bellatrix… It's not too late, come with me."

She laughed mockingly, a leer loud and deep that slowly rose from her throat. "And do what? Spend two months together, fooling ourselves. Pretending that everything is ok? Don't be so preposterous. Snakes and Lions do not mix. You know that, as well as I do, even if we are family… No, you know that I can never leave and you can never stay."

Sirius watched as she lit another cigarette, as the paper turned to an amber glow between her fingers and silently agreed with her. _'We belong in different worlds.'_

"Don't expect me to cry for you Sirius. Once you're gone, that's it! We will no longer be family, _you_ will no longer _exist_."

"I know," he said, wrapping his arms around her but she didn't return the embrace.

"I have to tell them you're gone." She pushed him away, and stubbed her half finished smoke on the ground. "It's my duty."

Bellatrix turned towards the door as her cousin hailed the Knight's Bus, never looking back.

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In Seventh year he witnessed the final stages of her metamorphosis, her transformation was complete. She was hateful and cruel not a glimmer of her former self was left. The Bellatrix he had once known was dead, she'd momentarily resurfaced during the summer but now she was just another Black. She had symbolically stepped up to his role as Black Heir; one she would steward until Regulus was of age. After all, she had shown the most potential. He'd heard the rumour that she had started dating a guy, couple years older than her, from a family of very dark wizards according to all accounts. He had always said that Andromeda was his favourite cousin, which was a lie; he couldn't very well say it was Bellatrix.

She had entered Grimmauld Place last summer and said nothing of her talk with Sirius, a head start that was to be her parting gift because for the rest of their lives they would be enemies. Bellatrix was seventeen and had cried twice in her life. Once when she was eleven, she had cried for what she knew would happen her cousin, and when she was sixteen and had lost Sirius forever. The day she vowed to hate him, as he'd left her for Mudbloods and Blood Traitors.

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End file.
